Inductor alternators were as popular and efficient as any generator before 1900. They had no brushes for high reliability but they were slightly larger than other generators and output unidirectional pulses. As a result they lost out to other generators except in special applications. Later the flux switch alternator replaced the inductor alternator as the flux switch alternator outputs AC and since all AC coils and DC coils were used twice as much, the flux switch alternator output four times more than inductor alternator, all else being equal.
Simple inductor alternators had four legs with AC and DC coils wound on each leg and a four lobed steel rotor. The flux switch alternator simply wound these same coils between the four legs instead of on the legs and cut two opposite lobes from the steel rotor. Since only steel rotates with a conservative force, what could require four times more input torque to the flux switch alternator?
Because of sags, glitches, brownouts, blackouts and other surprises from electric power systems many large electronic systems including computers now use a motorgenerator (M-G) for back-up or emergency power. Few motors or generators are individually over 95 per cent efficient so when their shafts are mechanically coupled, the overall efficiency of an M-G with separate motors and generators is seldom over 90 percent efficient.
It is commonplace to teach the output of a generator is equal to the mechanical input power minus the losses. It is also known from Lenz's law (but seldom taught) a generator that is 95 percent efficient consumes 95 percent of the input to overcome torque due to internal forces and 5 percent goes to losses. The rotors of most of today's generators are repelled as they approach a stator and are attracted back by the stator as soon as the rotor passes the stator in accordance with Lenz's law. Thus, most rotors face constant nonconservative work forces and therefore, present generators require constant input torque.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a more compact motor generator.
It is also an objective of this invention to bias all steel above ground by attaching this steel to the positive terminal of a power supply or battery and grounding the negative terminal to bleed off or gound most free electrons to decrease losses from unwanted induced currents. This will also decrease losses in any other motor, generator or transformer with armatures.
It is further an objective of this invention to make a more compact and far more efficient motor generator by unitization.
It is yet another objective of this invention to take advantage of a conservative no work force demonstrated by a simple damped oscillator consisting of a steel ball bearing released off center on a button permanent magnet with magnetic poles on the flat surfaces.
According to this invention, the legs or the rotor of a flux switch alternator are provided with motor windings. The steel rotor of the unitized flux switch alternator actually aids the input torgue for half of each rotation as the rotor is always attracted and never repelled. This construction makes it possible for some of the current or power fed to the motor windings to magnetically feed through a solid magnetic path to the AC output windings which does not occur in today's M-Gs as they are only mechanically coupled by their shafts and have no common magnetic path to share.
From basic electronic technology we learn a charged condensor has few free or conduction electrons on the positive plate and an excess of free electrons on the negative or grounded plate. Since steel armatures are conductors, there has been considerable effort expended in materials research to increase resistance to conduction electrons in armature materials to thereby reduce hysteresis and eddy current damping losses. Another more common approach is to laminate or powder these armatures. Accordingly, a further feature of the invention, the reduction in hysteresis and eddy current damping losses.
This invention provides a biased and unitized M-G which is smaller, has less loss, and is more efficient than present units.
Since the steel rotor is always attracted to the strongest magnetic field regardless of it's polarity, steel gets a conservative force or is accelerated to a leg and slowed down or decelerated by the magnetic field set up in the legs by the DC coils or permanent magnets of the flux switch alternator. Moreover, because the flux induced into the two lobed rotor by the stationary source of field flux exhibits no reluctance change as rotation takes place, there is an essentially lossless transfer.
Well established mechanical or solid-state commutator technology allows the pulsing or energizing of the motor coils (whether stationary on the legs or on the rotor) to selectively provide given magnetic polarities when the rotor gets within 30 degrees of any leg in the direction of motion of the rotor and to deenergize these pulses 10 degrees or so before the rotor gets to a leg to take advantage of a large collapsing field.